This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - 076 / The Messy Middle (Embracing Uncertainty)

Episode Date: December 8, 2021

I was introduced to the term “the messy middle” at a retreat I attended recently, and it was like a light bulb went off in my brain. That’s EXACTLY where I am. That place in between knowing where I am, and where I want to go… that feels unclear, and is plagued with ups and downs, fits and starts, several steps forward and then a few backward. While 2021 was about me finding clarity on where I am heading, I’m not totally sure how to get there yet. I know it’s going to require more risk, more work and more trust to get where I want to be in my professional life. Have you experienced this before? Are you experiencing it now? In this episode I share some lessons, and invite you to join me in the messy middle. I salute those of you who are here with me, and I bow down to those of you who’ve reached the other side. Because it takes courage to be in the messy middle and trust in yourself and your purpose that you’ll get on the other side, even if you don’t YET know the how, when and where. Courage, trust, purpose… that’s most definitely Woman’s Work. To learn more about what we are up to outside of this podcast, visit us at NicoleKalil.com

Coming up on this episode of This Is Woman's Work. I'd submit to you that all you regular listeners hit pause and jump over to Apple Podcasts if you're not there already and go to the This Is Woman's Work podcast. Scroll all the way down until you see ratings and reviews. And then underneath that, click where it says, write a review. Then hit the stars, all five of them, if that's true for you, and write your favorite thing about our podcast. It doesn't need to be long or even grammatically correct, but your feedback will be so helpful to me in so many ways. I know you're busy, but I'm asking for just a couple minutes of your time before you continue

listening. Okay, now that we've taken care of that, and thank you, it really does make a difference, let's get started with our next episode of This Is Woman's Work. I'm your host, Nicole Kalil, and I'm inviting you to join me in my messy middle. I kicked off the This Is Woman's Work podcast in 2021 by talking about failure and not just failure in general and not I'd recovered from it so it was easy to talk about and because I was swimming in all of my successes failure, but my own personal and very real feelings and experiences with failure. And I didn't do that episode to be inspirational.

Frankly, we weren't even ever sure we were going to release it. I did it to be transparent and because we rarely get to hear from people while they're experiencing failure. And I was hoping it would be both helpful for anyone else experiencing fear and doubt to know that they're not alone. And also as somewhat of a cathartic experience for me. So it's with those same intentions that I record this episode. I bet you thought my follow-up to the failure episode would be to share how it all worked out exactly how it was supposed to

and that the heavens opened up and the light shone through and how I'm making millions of dollars and can see now all the lessons that my failures were meant to teach me. Yeah, that would have been cool. And I kind of thought I would do that too, which is probably why I haven't done many solo episodes this year,

because I was subconsciously waiting for that to be my story. But it's not, at least not yet. The truth is a lot has happened and a lot of great things, mostly good, and some not so. So I don't feel the same fears and doubts I was experiencing last year, or at least far less frequently with much less intensity. I don't feel like I'm in that committed relationship with failure anymore. I've moved on, but I haven't arrived. I'm in a place that was lovingly referred to by a woman that I respect as the messy middle. I'm guessing many of us have visited this place before and probably will again in many aspects of our lives. But I'll be honest that I've never let myself like hang out here before. I've passed through, sort of looked around a little bit and booked the next flight out, if you get what I mean. So what is this messy middle? I'm defining it as any time or space in your life where you

know where you've been and you kind of know where you are and you're clear about what you want or where you're headed, but you're totally unclear about the how, the what, the who, the when that it's going to take for you to get there. It's kind of like standing on one side of a wide, deep, raging river and seeing the other side and knowing for sure that you want to get over there, but not seeing any way across. And so you start building a bridge without having the first sweet clue on how one builds bridges and wishing you would have paid more attention in shop class or to anybody who's ever built anything around you

and kicking yourself for not taking any engineering courses when you were in college. You get the picture, right? Well, that's where I am. I'm about halfway over that damn river, dangling out there like a fucking crazy person, having made some mistakes and had some successes, and I've learned a whole lot about bridge building

in the process. So I'm feeling more confident about my abilities and I can see where I'm going more clearly. It feels closer, but I'm not there yet. And it's still going to require more risk, more work, and more trust to get there. Ultimately, the messy middle is the part in between where you are and where you're headed that can feel unclear and is plagued with ups and downs, fits and starts, several steps forward, and then a few backward. That's where I am. And my overwhelming feeling of the year as it relates to my business, and even to a certain extent, my purpose has been uncertainty. Not uncertainty about where I'm headed, but lots of confusion on how to get there. And since I know that I'm not the only person who's visited the messy middle and have felt this

discomfort, I thought I'd share some of the lessons I'm learning and have learned along the way. And the first big lesson is that it's actually okay to hang out in the messy middle. In fact, it takes a lot of courage. It's a brave thing to sit in and surrender to this unknown. This isn't natural or comfortable to me. As I've said before, my normal MO would be to hightail it out of here. And I found myself doing that a lot in the first half of the year because I was and am uncomfortable. And in that discomfort, I reverted back to what I've always done. I tried to problem solve, make plans, execute on all sorts of ideas. Basically, I was looking for and creating short-term dopamine hits so that I didn't have to feel my own

discomfort. Is that a bad thing? Well, I'd argue that it's certainly not the worst thing I could have been doing, but the problem was that I allowed myself to get distracted and I lost focus on what was most important to me. I was in action, but not in the direction of my goal, as Kristen Burke would say. If I go back to the visual of this bridge, I had begun building off to the left. And then I thought, oh, maybe I need to go to the right. And then I started building up and then back down. When there was really only one direction I ultimately wanted to go, and that was straight ahead. I learned that not only was it okay to stay uncomfortable in the messy middle, I needed to. And you might straight ahead. I learned that not only was it okay to stay uncomfortable in the messy middle, I needed to. And you might be thinking, well, doesn't action build confidence?

Yes, absolutely. Action does build confidence. But my problem was that I let fear of being uncomfortable, of being uncertain, distract me from being in action towards what actually mattered. Said another way, I spent far too much time being busy and not enough time being intentional. A recent and really consistent example of this, and you know this if you're a regular listener, has been social media. I've said it before, but I'm not the biggest fan. And I kept at the social media game

because I thought I had to, that I was supposed to as a business owner. And because I got some of those short-term dopamine hits from it. But ultimately I've realized that it was at best a distraction and at worst a huge energy drain. And it wasn't getting me any closer to my goals. So I've been taking a break. I'm not sure if you've noticed, but I've literally not been on social media for almost a month now. And it has been lovely. Like the first week was actually really hard.

I can't tell you how many times I caught my brain going, oh, this would be a good thing to post. Or I need to take a picture of that to share it later. Or, oh, that would be a really good message. And it really shocked me how much of my days, how much of my time was spent thinking about what I was going to share on social media. I'm not saying I'll never be on social media again or that I've changed my mind forever, but for now, it's a better choice for me to take those five to 10, sometimes plus hours a week and redirect them towards what really matters to me.

And one of the things I've also learned from that experience is the energy with which I do things matters as much, probably more than doing the thing And paying attention to my energy and what drains me and what fills me up is a really good guide of where I should be investing my time and my talent. So I've started asking myself in the morning, how do I want to show up in my messy middle today? And it's made all the difference. Okay, on to lesson two. And that is that I have been confusing trusting with knowing. My opportunity, I'd argue all of our opportunities is to trust ourselves, trust in our purpose. Even if you don't really know what your purpose is yet, trusting that you have one and trusting that our heart's desires are there for a reason. But that's not the same as knowing.

And I'm not historically the best at trusting, and this has been another opportunity for me to choose and practice it. Just because I know what I want doesn't mean I know how or when it'll happen or even that it will happen. And because I don't know, I get to trust. And I'm incredibly grateful for this messy middle because I'm learning to trust myself more and more. And that's ultimately what confidence is all about. The definition of confidence in just about every language has something to do with trust,

firm trust, bold trust, belief in self. I don't know the how, the when, or the where, but I do trust. I trust myself. I trust in my purpose. And I've never been as confident as I am today, which has been a lovely reminder that perfectionism is the enemy of confidence and failure can actually build it, which is been a lovely reminder that perfectionism is the enemy of confidence and failure can actually build it, which is good to know that I'm not totally full of shit when I say this to other people because I say that all the time and I'm now experiencing

it again, which leads me to my third lesson. The messy middle is a great paradox in that I'm both incredibly clear and totally uncertain at the exact same time. It's also an incredible challenge and a great opportunity at the exact same time because it's hard and because it's uncomfortable. Let's be honest, far too many people look to the other side of their river and think, oh God, well, that's never going to happen. Or go take a bunch of classes and read a bunch of books on bridge building, but never actually get started. And the world is filled with people who give up.

I'm beginning to believe that our opportunity for greatness, however you define that for yourself, lies in our willingness to stay in the uncertainty of the messy middle, all the while moving toward what matters to you, some way, somehow putting one foot in front of the other. I'd submit to you that your opportunity for greatness lies within or by going through your own messy middle. So those are my big three lessons for now. The biggest ones. Trust me, there's been lots of others.

And I hope something in there resonates with you. And if you want some company in your own messy middle, make sure to sign up for my Ask Me Anything monthly free Q&A. This is completely free. We'll do an hour every single month and you can get that information by going to NicoleKleil.com. Sign up for my email and we will have places

for you to register in those weekly or monthly emails. And I wanna leave you with a quote I heard from Kate Scudder. And that is, life is too short to be miserable and too long not to be happy. But I'd add that there's lots of living to do in the middle, and it's okay and maybe a little bit necessary to get messy, but it's not okay to give up on what matters to you. So start building your bridge. Keep your focus on where you're headed. And if someone comes along and asks you what the hell you're doing, invite them to build

with you. And if they have the audacity to judge, criticize, or doubt you, go ahead and ignore them or give them the finger or laugh your head off like the crazy person they think you are. Whatever feels right for you. But when you're finished building, remember to charge those assholes a little extra when they want to cross your bridge. We call that the troll toll because every bridge is going to have them, but your job is to stay focused and build. So I invite you to join me in the messy middle. And I salute those of you who are out there with me. And I bow down to those of you who are out there with me, and I bow down to those of you who've reached the other side, because having courage to be in your messy middle and trusting yourself and your purpose

that you'll get on the other side, even if you don't know the how, when, and where, all of that is definitely woman's work.